Scattered, Smothered and Covered*

Sometimes you turn 23, and over ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, you ponder one of the most irascible mysteries of life: How many ways can Waffle House cook their hash browns?

True story. Happened yesterday. See, the hash browns can come plain -- just scattered -- or with add-ins, as many as you want. Maybe that's a factorial, it was suggested. Actually, the equation should be 2 to the power of x (with x being the number of add-ins), said the math whiz. Before anyone loses another minute of sleep, here are the facts, straight from the House's mouth:

What the menu claims: 1,572,864 ways
Variable one: number of sizes: 3
[Regular, Large, or Triple]
Variable two: number of add-ins: 7
[Smothered, Covered, Chunked**, Topped, Diced, Peppered, and Capped]

You can also order plain hash browns, a.k.a. Scattered, or get them "Scattered All the Way" with all the fixin's.

Which equation do I choose? Let's give those math skills a try and start with a simpler problem. Say we could start with 1 size and 3 verbs. We'll Smother, Cover, and Chunk our hash browns. Or Smother and Cover. Or Cover and Chunk. Or Smother and Chunk. Maybe just Smother, Cover, or Chunk independently. Or... plain! So we have 8 ways to eat them: one set of 0, three sets of 1, two sets of 2, and one set of 3. If we try 3! (that's a factorial) we get 6 (1 times 2 times 3). If we go 2^x, x=3, we get 8. But I just threw in the plain option at the last minute... is that really the answer?

More ambitious now; 5 add-ins, still 1 size plate. One set of 0 (for plain Scattered), five sets of 1, ten sets of 2, ten sets of 3, five sets of 4, and one set of 5. That's 32 breakfasts. But 5! equals 96; far off the mark. 2^5 results in 32. Houston, we have a winner!

Therefore, 2^7 for seven total add-ins comes to 128 within the regular size. Since there are three sizes, which are mutually exclusive, we just multiply by 3. And plain's already in there, as I just proved.

Waffle House says 1,572,864. This blog reports 384 ways. But I digress; we go to Waffle House for greasy food, not fuzzy math.

*Title of a Hootie & The Blowfish*** compilation. That means they like their browns with onions and cheese.
**Chunked=with ham in Waffle House lingo. Blogger, for some reason, doesn't think it's a word.
***The band's named for two of the members' friends. I just learned, just now, that "the Blowfish" refers to only one person.

Peas and Rice: On Profanity in The New Yorker

I just learned about Shouts & Murmurs, the capricious New Yorker column about inebriates, space aliens, terminal illness, and "Independent Phone Acquaintances." That's just September right there. If you want to catch up, go read about fourteen passive-aggressive hors d'oeuvres: "Hepatitis! (Note: This is not technically an appetizer.)"

Last week's "Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy" reminded me that The New Yorker can be so stodgy. They use so many accent marks, you'd swear you were perusing French. Scads of purée, fiancées--even Kahlúa, which you won't find on most bar menus. "O.K." must need those two periods, or help us all, we won't recognize it. Never mind that it's not an abbreviation. And when's the last time you visited a shack that serves delicious, ice-cold "Sno-Kones." That can't be in the AP stylebook.

Over-the-top syntax preservation, I don't know what to say about you. You know what else makes me laugh? The New Yorker's umlaut-mania with doubled vowels, as in "reënlist." Even more absurd is the "Cursing Mommy" column which pits these conventions against, and I quote, "Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting!" And the mock-blog string of blue words, all in caps. At least twelve!

Which brings me to the real issue. The New Yorker's unexpected recklessness with "God damn." Or "goddam." I've never understood the second spelling. Are we supposed to think, O language gods, that we're going polytheistic on things we abhor if "god" is lowercase? Is it somehow a less offensive word because we don't capitalize it? The mysteriously absent "n" doesn't fool anybody. We don't interpret that as a strange compound word for Zeus's own personal levee.

Lots of mild curses in English are censored takeoffs of harsher ones. "Zounds," which you can still find in your local comic shop, replaced "God's wounds," and took the religion right out of it. Same with sound-alikes: "Geez," or "You scared the bejeesus out of me." But peas and rice, people! The word "goddam" is still pronounced the same way as the clearly sacred version. To flip back and forth is just frivolous. Maybe it's a sly comment on our secularizing of everything spiritual, like when atheists tell people to go to Hell. It's OK (or O.K. in certain parlance). These heathens only mean hell, lowercase. With a wee little satan for company.

De-capitalization happens. We chop the heads off brand names; remember the last time you put on a band-aid and xeroxed something? But that's unconvincing. People wear Band-aids, yes they do, and they just copy things, in a generic, non-trademarked way. So why cut God out of this? I'm sure he doesn't appreciate you invoking his damnation in such a powerful way, and then stepping back and saying, "hey man, it's cool, I meant some other god. Oh, and I didn't say the 'n'."

It's best we take responsibility for our cursing. Good news--The New Yorker has no problem spelling four-letter words. Though they sometimes add extra "u"s. Oh, Heaven help us.

Caught Red-Banded!

I'd always wondered why previews advertised their appropriateness for a "general audience." It's like the Gospel of Judas; you surmise such a thing must exist somewhere in the world. Then, senior year of high school, $8.00 shelled out for Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle confirmed my suspicions: Restricted trailers are real! A fierce maroon overtook the screen, and soon enough, I was thrust into two uncensored, possibly uncomfortable minutes of advertising.

Can't remember what film it promoted. The earliest mention I found of red-band trailers was for Reservoir Dogs, so they've been around the block. But the red-band craze expanded, seemingly overnight. Regal theaters, in March 2008, began showing them before select R-rated features, and demand remains high. Part of the excitement comes from seeing if the naughty content in the description (i.e. "sexual content and strong language") will grace the preview. And just think, when the expletives and deshabille surface, why, they could be the mere tip of the iceberg.

Let's take a look at recent red-bands, and if you get enough bang (literally) for your buck:

• The Hangover. And it delivers, from the first dialogue ("Why can't we remember a goddamn thing from last night?") on through the bareass Asian badass who assaults the dudes and toddler self-pleasuring. F-words in the trailer: 3.
• Funny People. One dirty joke, and the rest at surprisingly tasteful network TV standards ("I'm really good at Grand Theft Auto. Maybe I should start beating up hookers."). It ends with a swipe at IKEA, for goodness' sake. F-counter: 2.
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall. More of a narrative than the first two snippets-and-punchline approaches. We're treated to Jason Segel's derriere and several sexual positions. F-counter: 0.
• World's Greatest Dad. Opens with a haiku on menstrual cycles. Clearly marketing didn't want to give too much away, because the trailer evades the (very R-rated) device that revs the plot. This trailer is reminiscent of the Funny People one: a feel-good story with dirty words. Untrue here, but at least it's spoiler-conscious. F-counter: 4.

Looks like red-bands stick to frat-boy hijinks. And there's a perverse joy to the restricted trailer, especially because it can be better than the film itself. Will this be true of these upcoming movies?

• Legion. Low-key until psycho-granny goes full zombie, and the hyperviolence ignites. A man's chest boils up and tears apart. Hard to tell how serious we should take this film. F-counter: 2, granny-style.
• Zombieland. 7 zombies machine-gunned, 3 zombies run over, 2 zombies punched in mouth, 1 zombie whacked with banjo. I think it's a comedy. F-counter: 3.
• Hot Tub Time Machine. Apparently it's about a hot tub -- wait for it -- that acts as a time machine. F-counter: 3.
• I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The Mount Everest of depravity; how can there possibly be a "general" trailer? There is, though, and it's actually funnier: "I need this like I need Hepatitis C." F-counter: 5.

Let the canons roar!

The New York Times just wrapped a four-part series on "The Future of Reading." Before you sound the death knell for education and our children and the fate of the world, read this article ("A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like") and consider. Have we been boxed into preordained reading lists that supposedly shape us just because they shaped previous generations? Must the pages classrooms turn be printed from wood pulp and black ink?

The piece begins as a teacher strikes Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum. On first read, I felt Lee, and the sum of twentieth-century American literature, had been slighted. Teaching Harry Potter may have literary merit, and as Literary and Cultural Studies demonstrated at William and Mary, you can analyze any creative output from Ulysses to The Lost Symbol. But all those allowances detract from what our children Should Learn.

Mmm, capital letters. Irony sighting. Yes, I'm suspicious of pre-administered educational paths. As any teacher who's constructed lesson plans knows, things go awry. Time flies by, students ask extra questions or light their pencil sharpeners on fire, and soon enough, the syllabus goes out the window. It's okay because the classroom is an interactive learning environment, 50 percent preparation, 50 percent inspiration. (Plus an additional, a-mathematical dollap of perspiration.)

Still, AP and IB tests, SATs and ACTs, IOWA and Stanford tests are a necessary evil. How else to quantify the essentially qualitative process of absorbing knowledge? We need some strictures, and so we need some books that are classics and will always be taught.

Or will they? When everyone else downed William Golding's Lord of the Flies in tenth grade, my English class covered Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon. Not in your high-school library? Frank's novel, not as literary or eloquent as Golding's, nonetheless bravely depicts a post-apocalyptic society of scavengers reconstructing their nuclear-smited world. An alternative to the standard harangue on civilization, but still a heady read, and poignant that year. We read Alas, Babylon in the same classroom where we sat eight years ago on a September afternoon, watching replays of the World Trade Center collapse, and verbalizing the emotions we'd felt all day long.

Context is everything. Reading recent novels during their zeitgeist may pull more students in, unearth more cultural relevance. Initially, I thought, "everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird," and indeed we can't let our children forget. But one novel is a mere ripple in an ocean of literature. There are technologically newer ways to let kids read, and why shouldn't they? Reading online is not the same, and I don't believe that the Internet will pull people into printed books. Too much light and sound; skimming the surface of online writing is inevitable. (If you did read the Times article, I reckon you sped through it. Even took a breather on Perez Hilton during the page jump.) But why say reading must be this, and knowledge must be that?

Literature is not ours. Language is not owned by us. We can only subjectively assess and choose, in a given time, in a given school, what is apropos. Now it doesn't mean eighth-graders should substitute Captain Underpants for Shakespearean tragedy. Let's not get irresponsible. There's a reason for the canons already in place, and perhaps there's nothing wrong with reminding ourselves why.

In ninth grade English, a friend raised her hand and said she hadn't liked Mockingbird (i.e., committed blasphemy). "Why do we have to read it? It's the same story we see all the time." And I remember the teacher said, "Maybe that's why it's important. We don't want to forget it."

Punctuation Police

The beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing series in poor editing jobs. Here's a simple pamphlet that I ripped off on the Red Line. Its public service mission is to dissuade you from majoring in English at our local Cambridge College.

I took the liberty of copyediting this card that promises learning at an "adavanced" level. If you're still convinced that Cambridge is the college for you, you might still have some difficulty. See, their key marketing point on this advertisement, the website, is wrong. There's a backslash missing after the "edu," so that "Page not found" will pop up.

Of course, they do offer a BA in Psychology. Maybe it's all a clever mindgame.

"Just one word: Plastics."

Back from the beach; and the blog resumes. Amid the sand and surf, I devoured the wonderful Pictures at a Revolution, written by Mark Harris, and published last year by Penguin. After my undergraduate thesis on The Graduate and sixties wanderlust, it's hard to resist the tsunami of New Hollywood talent and their French New Wave aspirations.


Harris doesn't judge the players of the 1967 upheaval of traditional studio filmmaking. But their political and racial attitudes sure don't weather the years as their great films do:

"I think that when the bulk of them get out of the rut they've been kept in, they're going to snag all the public relations jobs because they're brilliant about remembering people... This quality is straight out of the jungle; they had it in the jungle when I made The African Queen." -Katharine Hepburn, 1967

Harris also leads us through the excruciating production of Doctor Dolittle because, well, it bought its way to an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. If you see it, you'll wonder why. Everything went wrong. They wanted Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Alan Jay Lerner; they only acquired Rex, and he was an anti-Semitic terror on set. Animals aren't easy to work with: "The script just says, 'Swans do something,' and we have to see what they do," said a producer. An unattentive squirrel was sedated with gin from a fountain pen; after they got the desired shot, it blacked out. Oh, and the rhino came down with pneumonia. Perfect.

But looking back, it's apparent that many other studio films have wined and dined their way to Oscar nominations:

• 1956, the year of Three-Hour Spectacles! Around the World in 80 Days bested Giant, The Ten Commandments, and (the comparatively modest) The King and I.
• 1963: Cleopatra nearly bankrupted Fox. Naturally all Fox employees voted to save their jobs.
  
• 1969 gave us Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and... a wildly miscast Hello, Dolly.
• 1970: Patton. Five Easy Pieces. That subversive Altman flick MASH. And then the disaster movie Airport? Congratulations; theme park rides are now eligible for awards.
• 2003: With The Lord of the Rings ending (and ending and ending...), Lost in Translation picking up critical juice, and Clint Eastwood delving into noir with Mystic River, how much champagne did Master and Commander and Seabiscuit dole out?

All this is to say that filmmakers are both perceptive and practical. Everyone working on Dolittle knew it was a dud, but they had to pay rent somehow. The crew of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner recognized that its sting was too muted, its racial politics too strident to be anything more than didactic; but when you've got Hepburn, Tracy, and box-office star Sidney Poitier, what'll happen? Huge financial success. Meanwhile, Dustin Hoffman thought he was a mistake from Day One of The Graduate, preferring to whither away off-Broadway--and look at how well that turned out.